Quotes / Idiot Plot

Fanfiction

“This is a Tuesday thing isn't it? It's something not on the Mayors itinerary that every Tuesday every pony in town has to take hard drugs or have some sort of head trauma for the day just so the collective herd IQ drops by fifty percent isn't it.” Twilight growled into her fore hooves.

—"Brindle Gossip, part 1", Twilight Gets A Puppy

Literature

Greta: Almost every single person in this opera is behaving like a complete idiot, and I love it. Can I have more champagne?

Ruthven: The majority of opera plots would fall to bits if any one individual suddenly decided to act sensibly.

—Dreadful Company

How mortals take the gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear
And what of their own failings? Greed and Folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.

— Zeus, in The Odyssey, pointing out how the story of the Trojan War and its aftereffects often amounts to this.

"By 'an idiot plot,' I mean one in which the solution would come at once if an idiot investigator would but ask a logical question, or in which an idiot witness would but tell something he knows and which he has no reason to hide."

— "Earthset and Evening Star", Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov

Live-Action TV

"I'm just saying that the plan was genuinely dumb! ...as many of our plans are, I now realize."

— Dennis, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Newspapers

"Why don't they think? Because no one is allowed to think in this movie. Not one single event in the entire plot can possibly take place unless every character in the cast has brains made of Bac-O-Bits."

— Roger Ebert, review of Jungle 2 Jungle

Web Animation

"It's like every character put their retard hats on that morning by mistake."

— Zero Punctuation on Metroid: Other M

Webcomics

"It's at times like this that I question my policy of doing whatever dumb thing pops into my head."

— Helen, Narbonic

Web Original

Chernobyl Diaries: It should have been called Six Dumbasses In Search of a Clue

— Slate headline

Horror is not horror unless somebody does something stupid.

—Garrett Williamson, Spooky’s House of Jumpscares

"Reading a story written by idiots is bad enough, but reading a story written by idiots that's also about idiots is even worse."

— Fred Clark, criticizing Left Behind

"So, if I'm understanding this right, the Head-Staplers wanted to be off the planet, but once they got what they wanted, they decided to get revenge. Just read that again and realize how stupid this plot truly is. This film didn't need a rewrite; it needed a bullet between the eyes."

— The Agony Booth on Star Trek: Insurrection.

"The government controls the city of Blüdhaven because they're idiots. The Atomic Knights are running around Blüdhaven with no clear end goal because they're idiots. The Secret Society of Super Villains send two teams of nuclear-themed characters into Blüdhaven because they're idiots. Firebrand... is an idiot."

— Linkara on The Battle for Blüdhaven

"Can you imagine, say, Jean-Luc Picard bringing his dog down to an alien planet? Yeah, I didn't think so. But even if he did, and that dog whizzed on cultural landmarks, I can only see Picard being swiftly contrite and apologetic, immediately making amends to get that needed component. Hell, I think Wesley Crusher whizzed on some bushes in the first season of TNG, and Picard grovelled his ass off to save the kid. But Archer, as you probably guessed, is about to have a slightly different reaction."

— The Agony Booth on Star Trek: Enterprise, "A Night in Sickbay"

The cruise ship you're on is out of control, taken over by terrorists. They tell you that if you jump off you'll be sucked into the boat's propellers. Do you:

A: Laugh at them for being total idiots and jump off anyway
B: Open the rear ship doors and walk off, past the propellers and at sea level
C: Believe them, even though it's the biggest load of donkey bollocks anyone has ever said to you

Well the answer here is C. And that's the problem. The entire movie is based on the idea that if you step off a cruise ship you'll be sucked under to a certain death. You won't. It's wrong. Totally wrong in every way shape and form.

— Chris Parry on Speed 2: Cruise Control

"Much like the events of "A Prime Problem", the basic premise of this episode requires incredible stupidity on the part of the players. In this case, however, those players are the entire human race! Thirty seconds of video footage and the crowd outside City Hall is throwing fruit at the Autobots. Why are the public so quickly swayed after the number of times the Autobots have saved them in the past year or so? What kind of kangaroo court would convict on such incredibly flimsy evidence? What kind of absurdly inept trial lawyers would fail to examine every bit of footage available? How could Berger fail to notice Megatron cackling with mad glee as he sends his foes rocketing into the sun?"

— TFWiki.net on "Megatron's Master Plan Part 1"

Leia is totally daft military leader. Poe is ya momma joking his way in battle. The NR is just filled to morons. Luke is stupidly hiding under the wrong beliefs. And Rey thinks she can save Hitlers soul after 1 day of Jedi lessons.

The only person who isn’t an idiot is the one person who the ST literally calls a dummy. Finn. He gives up to date accurate intel that saves billions of lives.

Yeah the entire plot and world building of the entire ST rests on nearly every character being stupid and cartoonishly dumb. Which is then more of a reflection of its writers

—Commenter on r/saltierthancrait on the Star Wars sequel trilogy

I hold that all God Mode Sues inevitably end up with idiot plots. If - and that’s a pretty big if - not by virtue of the suethor failing to grasp the implications of all the powers they have heaped and keep on heaping onto the Sue, then by virtue of the suethor being far more interested in showing off how awesome their character is and/or indulging in their personal power/revenge/harem fantasies than actually bringing the story to a conclusion. In either case, we end up with a character who, despite trivialising every encounter, consistently fails at actually bringing things to an end, seemingly caring far more about their own self-aggrandisement than their supposed heroic motivations.

—Bastethotep, Fundies Say the Darndest Things

"The problem with movies is that they seem to take place in an alternate universe where we all have such a short fuse that simply looking at someone the wrong way will cause a war."

—Benjamin Payne, Doomsday Debunked, a group on Facebook

Web Video

"That's their ship? A little shuttle?? Admirals always travel around in style on big Federation ships (At the very least an Excelsior class)! But this situation requires even more attention, because we're dealing with a truly priceless advancement in technology. And we're also working with a really sketchy alien race that look like monsters. And they've got five huge, powerful warships. What's to stop them from just killing all the Federation people, takin' the goods and leaving? A couple of ships on our side would strengthen our hand a little in preventing that. But a starship or two there would mess up the plot."

— RedLetterMedia on Star Trek: Insurrection

"Goodnight, the stupid is spewing out of these characters like it's Mt. Vesuvius!"

— Rowdy C. Moore on the plot of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Turnabout Intruder"

"This story can only happen because everyone's retarded!"

— Diamanda Hagan on Urban Gothic, episode 8 "Cry Wolf"

"So as soon as he starts going down, the bitch runs off without any notice to go and try and get a signal...Why wouldn't she just say she's gonna go check for cell phone signals so that last guy waits with the rope and they all don't get trapped down there? Oh, right: because the plot depends on stupidity."

— Phelous, reviewing Incubus

"The only reason [stopping Dr. Gero before he creates the Artifical Humans] is an issue is because there would be no story if the characters did the smart thing. So, the story has to turn [the heroes] into idiots who refuse to act on this extremely ominous warning. This scene had to have happened after Trunks returned to the future, because he would have had a psychotic breakdown if he was forced to witness the absolute stupidity swirling through the brains and gurgling out of the mouths of the people he had just entrusted the safety of Earth to."

— Dragon Ball Dissection on the Cell Arc

"Okay, let me just clarify what has happened. That asshole literally kidnapped me from across the entire galaxy with neither my knowledge nor consent just so you could make me mystic you up a new set of Dragon Balls because you are all a cavalcade of f***ups. Did I miss anything?"

— Dende, Dragon Ball Z Abridged

"Basically, the only reason characters ever walk around in this movie is because they hear something horrifying and they go check it out alone."

—Screenwriter, The Nun Pitch Meeting

And even though the mountain that Thorin’s company wants to get to is right next to Lake town and logically it's the next place the dwarves would want to go... that is not where the bad guys look. Oh and also Legolas and Toriel show up to help.

So now the dwarves that aren't supposed to be here have to fight off the Orcs that aren't supposed to be here with help from a guy who isn't even in this book and a woman who is made up for this story solely so one of the dwarves could have a hot elf girlfriend and the elves that aren't supposed to be here have to heal the dwarf that isn't supposed to be here because he has a magic evil wound that he shouldn't have because the bad guys that weren't supposed to be here had evil magic weapons that they weren't supposed to be given by the bad guy who isn't even in this story!

— The Cosmonaut Variety Hour on the circumstances for the Battle of Lake Town in The Desolation of Smaug as part of The Hobbit trilogy.

Western Animation

Edd: We could just go to our house, Eddy.
Eddy: What, and ruin the plot?

— Ed, Edd n Eddy, "Knock Knock, Who's Ed?"

"Well, that's our story. Yes, they are all idiots, aren't they?"

— The Narrator, Spongebob Squarepants, "Nasty Patty"

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